How Covid has changed the dating game

Just before lockdown began, Matt Hancock and Dr Jenny Harries presented the nation’s daters with a stark dilemma. Non-cohabiting couples, they advised, should either move in together for the duration or stay physically apart. Couples who barely knew each other’s surnames were catapulted into levels of intimacy that would normally have evolved over years and the enforced lovebirds were soon living like old-style pensioners, spending every moment in each other’s company, arguing over hand sanitiser brands and giving one another dodgy haircuts.

For the large pool of existing singletons, the picture was radically different. Gone was the usual flurry of social engagements, and even the possibility of meeting someone at work. With face-to-face meetings forbidden, romance meant either breaking the rules (and risking the wrath of neighbourhood Covid snitches) or restricting yourself to virtual dating. Relationships froze in time. Meanwhile, many friends reported former flames trying to rekindle things in lockdown.

Covid’s impact on the dating landscape mirrors its effect on the entire economy. The pandemic has simultaneously sped up and slowed down existing trends, hastening the demise of the traditional office and business travel, while vainly trying to preserve the economy in aspic through business loans and furloughing. Dating had already migrated largely online, particularly among the young. The worst excesses of the #MeToo movement had put paid to office banter and dampened physical interactions; far safer to meet people through the socially sanctioned, sanitised forum of a dating app than risk approaching someone in a pub or club. Where #MeToo made workplaces more po-faced and paranoid, the pandemic has removed the office from the dating game altogether and added layers of complexity to what was already a social minefield.